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Coinbase, the popular San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that users can now withdraw their Bitcoin SV, or BSV for short. The new token was the result of a hard fork in Bitcoin Cash that occurred in mid-November, which essentially split the Bitcoin spin-off into two more chains: Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin SV.

Until today, Coinbase users who had Bitcoin Cash in their Coinbase wallet at the time of the hard fork were unable to withdraw their rightfully-owned Bitcoin SV tokens.

A hard fork occurs when a blockchain diverges into two different paths forward — the history of the original blockchain is maintained on both sides of the split, while a new chain moves forward with new rules.

When this happens, exchanges such as Coinbase are put in a position of deciding which of the two newly-created independent blockchains will remain the “legitimate” one, and Coinbase announced in November that the original Bitcoin Cash chain, or the “ABC” chain, would retain its Bitcoin Cash designation.

In mid-November, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) underwent a hard fork, resulting in two chains. On November 20th, we announced the “ABC” chain would retain the designation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on Coinbase.

As Coinbase noted in an email sent to users on Thursday, this resulted in those with a Bitcoin Cash balance in their Coinbase account an associated Bitcoin SV balance. The amount of Bitcoin Cash associated with a given address was allocated to this new BSV address at the time of the fork.

The competing chain, known as Bitcoin SV, resulted in a forked coin now commonly referred to as BSV. When the hard fork occurred, the BSV blockchain used the amount of BCH associated with an address at the time of the fork to determine the amount of BSV that would be allocated to the parallel address on the BSV blockchain.

Notably, Coinbase is not supporting Bitcoin SV as a currency on its cryptocurrency exchange, but simply allowing users to withdraw Bitcoin SV to their external wallets. As of this writing, Coinbase supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Litecoin for trading on its consumer exchange.

For those who don’t remember, Bitcoin Cash itself was a hard fork of Bitcoin, which similarly granted users the same amount of Bitcoin Cash that they had Bitcoin at the time of the fork. Bitcoin Cash hopefuls expected that the forked chain would gain respect as the “real” Bitcoin, but that didn’t happen.

In mid-November, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) underwent a hard fork, resulting in two chains. On November 20th, we announced the “ABC” chain would retain the designation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on Coinbase.

The competing chain, known as Bitcoin SV, resulted in a forked coin now commonly referred to as BSV. When the hard fork occurred, the BSV blockchain used the amount of BCH associated with an address at the time of the fork to determine the amount of BSV that would be allocated to the parallel address on the BSV blockchain. As such, the amount of BSV now available in your Coinbase.com account is the same as the amount of BCH that was in your Coinbase (Coinbase.com and Coinbase Pro) account at the time of the hard fork.

Coinbase does not support purchases or sales of BSV, so you cannot sell your BSV for fiat currency on Coinbase. You may send your BSV balance to an external wallet following instructions here.